May 14, 2008

A True Library Story

Late this afternoon I was working in the café of a public library in New Jersey when I overheard two teenage boys marveling about how safe the library was – “by far the safest in the area.” Their reasons included that a) the library had not been forced to close during the after-school hours like Maplewood’s because of all the crime; b) it wasn’t nearly as bad as the library in Irvington, where they had heard that people tried to smuggle in guns behind books; and c) as for the library in Newark – just forget it.

Like this:

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Yes, the library has a cafe, though it’s having trouble getting a restaurant that can sell food there at a profit. So right now, the refreshments consist mainly of a machine that sells coffee and hot cocoa.

I’m a librarian at a small (~9000 students) state university in Texas, and we have a coffee bar. They sell some food – pastries and other sweet treats, chips, pre-made salads and sandwiches. A new vendor will take over in June (we’re in interim now and they’re closed) and will expand (not a lot of space to do that though!) and start carrying a few more food items.

We allow covered drinks into the library, but people are SUPPOSED to eat their food in the student lounge next to the coffee bar. Both are in our outer lobby.

Your coffee bar sounds wonderful. I’m all for adding cafes to libraries, and not just because they make it so much easier to work there all day if needed: They make libraries homier and more inviting.

If my library is any indication, everybody likes them. The only problem is that it’s hard for libraries to make them work financially, because many of the people who use them (such as students who come in after school) don’t have much money to spend.